Category: The West

Modi gets his man, triumphs in Delhi local polls; how the Left now backs the bankers; a great new magazine

A little bit of a round-up and some thoughts on the plight of the Left around the globe: I have been busy on something else this month (see below), so I am running around catching up on what I want to discuss on here. Back to normal service soon! OK …

At last Vijay Mallya, rural Hertfordshire’s most notorious alleged loan defaulter (but ask the banks and his wretched employees, who should know, or the Central Bureau of Investigation in Delhi, which recently charged the business genius with fraud) was arrested in London on 18 April on an extradition warrant. This doesn’t mean he’ll be dragged, handcuffed and squealing, onto an India-bound jet next week, desirable as that might be. It’s the start of a long, lawyer-enriching process that should nonetheless eventually see the ‘businessman’ back in the country he loves – and I do mean India not the Bahamas. PM Modi tweeted, ‘There is no place for corruption in India. Those who looted the poor & middle classes will have to return what they have looted.’ Not much fun to be in Modi’s crosshairs, I should think. Mallya’s besotted cheerleader at the FT must be sobbing.

The Democrats and the US media gave Trump the Modi treatment – with the same results

My friend Winston the electrician called round last week, a couple of days after Donald Trump’s election victory. I unlocked and swung open the gate and he was pointing at me.

‘You’re the man, Andy, you’re the man! You said Trump would win!’ he said.

I’d briefly forgotten the conversation we’d had the previous Monday, on the eve of the US presidential election, when I’d heretically argued that in spite of all the pro-Clinton hysteria on the TV and wireless, I thought that Trump had a very good chance of stealing victory from under the noses of the Democrat-supporting media. Almost all journalists and commentators were so frantically virtue-signalling that they couldn’t detect the reality of what was happening on the ground.

And so it transpired. I didn’t take any particular delight in Trump’s victory; I wasn’t even gruntled at having been more or less correct in predicting he would win. I didn’t like Hillary at all – a greedy, corrupt, establishment money-grubber and war-monger who had utterly forsaken the ordinary folk who were the Democratic Party’s mass (and essential) voters. Trump was loud, vulgar, abusive and egomaniacal – although he was less boring than the alternative. Like many, I quite liked some of what he was saying but I wondered if it was insincere and crazed gibberish that he had no real intent of making good on. But he certainly knew how to ‘lead and pace’ his supporters.

I recommend everybody to watch Peter Zeihan here as he delivers a barnstorming illustrated speech on the future of the world. He is a geopolitical analyst who for years worked at Stratfor, known as the ‘private sector CIA’ and has since struck out on his own. He is a great speaker, very funny, knowledgeable, engaging and stimulating.

I should warn that it is very much a Texan’s-eye view, and I am mentioning Zeihan mostly because he mentions India, at 47 minutes in, thusly:

‘The short version on India is that if you’re happy with it today, it’s not going to change a whole lot, the reason being that the Ganges basin is the most productive agricultural zone on the planet in terms of calories per acre per year. That gives you endless population growth. However, there is not a single navigable river in the country. So high populations, no capital. That’s abstract [sic: abject?], total, unending poverty. But India’s looked like this since the fifth century. So if this is an India you can operate in, an India you know and like – great! They are not a major player in Bretton Woods, never have been. They’re not going to change, but if you think India’s about to turn the corner, the whole ‘Shining India’ concept, I’m sorry. It’s looked like this for 1500 years; it’s not about to change.’

Welcome

I am Andy Marino, biographer of Narendra Modi, and this site is designed to explain Indian economics and finance, government and politics, culture and history to Western investors, businessmen and entrepreneurs. For more information, click on my Intro section.